(600 years BCE. [before common era]to 1000CE.)
The Gandharian civilization covered an area of present day northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, but it also influenced directly, a vast area of Asia – from Central Asia to Northeast India.
Gandhara – the land of delightful perfume – was part of the historic Vedic, Persian, Greek, Mauryan, Bactrian, Scythian, Parthian, Kushan, Hepthalite, and other Kingdoms and empires. It was an ancient melting pot, a great mix of Indo-Aryan (Iranian), Greek and other peoples and cultures.
This kingdom was one of sixteen ancient kingdoms which made up the country of Mahajanapadi which existed from early in the first millennium BCE., to the eleventh century this Common Era. Gandhari people settled and it developed and grew in the Peshawar Valley, the Pothohar Plateau and along the banks of the Kabul River down to where it enters the Indus River. The main centres of power were the cities of Kabul, Takshashila (Taxsila) and Kapisa (Now Bagram).
Buddhism was popular in Gandhara along with other religions such as Greek (Hellenistic) beliefs, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Mithrasism, Shaivism, and Vedic beliefs were also practiced by devotees.
Gandhara was a place of Buddhism under the Kushan kings and was part of their empire which existed for hundreds of years in Central Asia, starting circa 100 B.CE. (Before this Common Era).
Gandhara was famous for its world-class universities such as the one at Taxila. Taxila was an important centre of Buddhist learning from the 5th century BCE., to the second century CE. It was a big institution with thousands of students. It taught many subjects: medicine, religion, the sciences, literature and the arts. (Jesus was thought to have studied there as part of his training as a Buddhist priest). It was an engine of learning that strengthened Buddhism and drove it forward.
It was during this period that a great tower, the Great Pagoda of Kabul was built. It was on a high hill overlooking Kabul and it was a salute to the greatness of the Buddha and his teachings.
Buddhism spread out from Gandhara to east and northeast Asia by means of traders and businessmen who used the great land network of roads joining east with west, simply called “the Silk Road.” Gandhara was located at a central, midway point of this great network of land communication, but this also allowed other cultural ideas and influences (and military and even diseases!) to arrive from other places that sprung up from time-to-time (occasionally) over the ages.
Gandhara’s other contributions to the progress of civilization includes the first linguistic system of Grammar (by Panini), and the highly admired style of Greco-Buddhist arts. It developed the concept (or idea) of zero in a sequence of numbers, and this was accepted by the Arabic world, and much more.
Languages such as Greek, Aramaic, Sanskrit, Old Persian, and Prakrits (local languages of the people) such as Gandhari (written in the Kharoshti script) were spoken and or written languages used in Gandhara.
The Buddhist Pagoda – Kabul
This Pagoda was an ancient architectural treasure worthy of protection as a world heritage site: it was built at the top of the high hill which overlooks Kabul, in Afghanistan.
The pagoda was built with six sides and of six stories high, about some 18 meters high and when new it would have been capped with a 15 meter high canopy of burnished copper and gilded, too!
It must have been a magnificent sight!
On the walls, inside, there would have been fine paintings of scenes from the Buddhist tradition. But on the top floor there would have been beautifully carved and finished Buddha statues, each looking out of windows to the horizon in all directions.
The Buddha could see out around the universe and bestow his infinite compassion, loving kindness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity: which summates to infinite wisdom and goodness.
The pagoda was man’s testimony in stone and metal to the greatness of the Buddha and his teachings. Thankfully the teachings still live on.
It was during the Kushan Empire in particular that Buddhism flourished and developed into the forms and styles that we now recognize as Buddhist. Emperor Kanishka helped to build this vast empire and he was undoubtedly sympathetic to, and strongly influenced by Buddhism. For a period early in the life of their empire the Kushans had Kabul as their capital city. Emperor Kanishka was a great patron of the arts and many new ideas were developed.
Ghazni was born in 971 and right from his younger days received Islamic education and had a fair knowledge of the Koran as well as the Hadiths.
Fall of Afgahnistan to Muzlims
The kingdom was conquered by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1021 CE. and the name of Gandhara disappeared for ever.
Despite being submerged by Islam, the teachers and students converted or killed, pockets of the Gandharian legacy still live on with the continuation of many aspects of culture, arts and traditions, etc., in present day Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond.
The collapse of the Buddhist Pagoda is of great symbolic significance
It had already been weakened by Soviet Tank artillery target practice and had two areas of weakness. Its collapse happened on a dark, moonless night towards the end of March, 1998. Residents, living in the village at the foot of the hill heard a sound like an explosion.
The tower’s collapse has a powerful symbolic significance for us all, particularly those of us living through the last ten years. The young reporter said that the pagoda was at least 1600 years old. (One can speculate that it was built, perhaps, to oppose the advances of the murderous Roman Empire with its new “universal” religion.)
What is known, too, is that this pagoda was the original, the archetypal pagoda design concept which spread throughout the Northern Buddhist world to the east; there are many examples in China and Japan still standing today.
So, what was lost on the 12th April, 1996, was something of immense cultural significance for Asia and the world, and a most wonderful example of human imagination and creativity. Within the following two years, the Bamiyan Buddha statues, were to be destroyed, too.
(Information taken from Wikipedia on the Internet.) ROS. 12/9/2012